AirPort

Apple’s AirPort family of wireless routers begins with two accessories: the $99 AirPort Express and the $199 AirPort Extreme. Since June 2012, the AirPort Express has looked identical to the Apple TV, a small rounded square, but made from white plastic with slightly different ports on the back. It offers 802.11n support, twin Ethernet ports, a full-sized USB port for connecting a printer, and an analog/optical audio port. Previously, it was designed to rest next to a wall outlet, but now it is meant to sit on a table or desk.

In part because it needs significantly more space inside to hold large antennas for 802.11ac wireless support, the current AirPort Extreme looks like a much taller version of the AirPort Express. Introduced in June 2013, it features three inbound Ethernet ports, plus one for communication with a broadband modem, and one full-sized USB port for connecting a printer or hard drive. The exact same design is used in the AirPort Time Capsule, a version that includes either a 2TB or 3TB hard drive for backup purposes, selling for $299 or $399.

Apple has started selling a mesh Wi-Fi system from Linksys both on its website and in stores. The move is notable as Apple hasn’t updated its own Wi-Fi base station hardware since 2013 and doesn’t currently offer its own mesh Wi-Fi system.

The latest documents posted by WikiLeaks reveal that the CIA has been hacking wireless routers for years. One particular hack, known as CherryBlossom, allowed the agency to monitor all Internet activity of a target, and even redirect their browser to government-created phishing sites …

The newest AirPort devices are more than three years old, so the future of the products has been in doubt for a while. Sales revenue of AirPort products must pale in comparison to Apple’s other lines, which are counted in the tens of billions of dollars.

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Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport says that anonymously tracking smartphones through airport security has enabled it to cut the average waiting time by a third.

The system, developed by Danish company Blip Systems, scans both WiFi and Bluetooth connections to look for MAC addresses of mobile devices passing through security. Counting the number of devices in each queue enables the system to estimate the length of the queue. The queue length is displayed to passengers in minutes, so they can choose which queue to join, and also used to help the airport allocate the right number of security personnel.

Blip says that it anonymizes this data, and only uses device counts. You might think iOS 8 users don’t have to take the company’s word for it since Apple introduced MAC address spoofing when scanning for networks, but the protection offered by this was last year shown to be rather limited.

The same system is used in a number of other airports around the world, but this is the first time it’s been used in the USA.

We already knew the main bad news: soldered RAM means you can’t upgrade the memory later, so you have to decide how much you want and pay Apple’s pricing for it. Both iFixit and MacminiVault described replacing the RAM as “impossible.”

Getting access to the inside of the new Mac mini is more difficult than it used to be … expand full story